


Fairy Tale

by mahoni



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 5000-10000 Words, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Gen, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-30
Updated: 2008-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sorcerer captures John and his band of adventurers and turns them into fairies. Problematic, but not fatal -- as long as they can avoid being eaten by dragons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairy Tale

The floor of the little cage was covered with straw and up off of the floor of the actual cell, which was a small mercy. John would have hated to be sprawled face down in the crud that covered the actual floor. That would be adding insult to injury. Or, adding horrible diseases and probable blood poisoning to injury.

Days like these made him wonder if hiring on to be an Agent of the Goddess's Avatar had been the wisest career move. He used breed dragons full time, which had been a hell of a lot more relaxing. Granted it wasn't nearly as much fun as running all over the country fighting bad guys and questing for really cool, powerful magical artifacts; but he never got beat up and turned into a fairy back in those days, either.

The lock on his cage clicked, and he heard the door swing open.

"John," Teyla said.

She knelt beside him and he looked sideways up at her.

"How did you get in here?" he said.

"I picked the lock." She held up her lock picks before stowing them back in their hidden pouch. "It seems that everything we had on us shrunk with us."

"Huh," he said. "Handy."

"How badly are you injured?"

"Hardly at all, actually. I'm fine."

He shifted a bit, favoring the arm he hoped wasn't dislocated, until he was lying on his side and could see her better. She looked strange. He hadn't gotten a good look at the others after the transformation, since Kolya had him taken away almost immediately, but she obviously had not been turned completely into a fairy. Fairies were humanoid, but besides differences in size and the fact that walking wasn't their only option for getting around, real fairies also had faces that only echoed human -- same general shape and the same bits and pieces, but sort of flatter where there should be definition and sharper where there should be curves. Their eyes were too big and too dark, expressions too vapid, teeth too animal-like, that kind of thing. A lot of people found that appealing, even cute; John tended to think it was just creepy.

But Teyla still looked pretty much like Teyla, only...exotic. Her ears were longer and they curved up to a point. Delicate whorls of tiny, colorful feathers accented her high cheekbones and her temples, and spread across her skin down the sides of her neck, over her bare shoulders and nearly to her wrists. And then there were the wings, thin and mostly translucent, like an insect's, and so long that the slender ends draped over her feet and pooled on the ground beside her knees.

The fairy thing looked really good on her, actually. He hoped he looked as non-creepy as she did, although he had no doubt that what was drop-dead gorgeous on her probably just looked ridiculous on him. Feathers and wings? Yikes.

"You do not look fine," she said.

"It looks worse than it is," he said. And since that would be a lot more believable if he wasn't lying on the floor in a heap, he tried to sit up. "They pretty much just threatened me a whole lot."

She rested her hand on his injured shoulder and he flinched.

"Well. Mostly just threatened. They just want me to think about what they'll do if we don't tell them where the Staff is -- "

She nodded sympathetically, and then, sliding her hand down to his elbow, she grabbed hold of his arm, braced her other hand against his back and yanked his shoulder back into place.

A few moments later, after his vision cleared and he caught his breath, he noticed he'd collapsed flat on his face again. Great. He rolled onto his back and glared up at her. "Ow."

She stood and held out a hand. "It feels better, does it not?"

He took her hand and let her help him up.

"Yeah, well, a little warning would have been nice."

"You would have fussed and complained and taken forever before you even let me near it."

He couldn't exactly argue with that, so he studiously ignored it and followed her out of the cage. The door of the cell was closed.

"Did they lock it when they brought me in?" he asked.

"Unfortunately."

They stopped before the door and looked up at the lock. And up. And up. If they'd been their normal size, the lock would have sat somewhere just above waist level; in their current state it was at least twice the height of either of them.

"Okay," he said. "You're the expert at breaking and entering. Any suggestions?"

*

They heard Rodney before they saw him.

"I'll die in here before you even have a chance to ask me any questions!" There was a rattling clang, as of someone shaking the bars of a cage. "I've already got a rash! And I'm having trouble breathing, and -- and -- Kolya! This is cruel, even for you! Hello? Is anyone even out th- " An explosion of sound echoed through the dungeon as Rodney sneezed. "Ugh, _ugh_, oh by god, this is disgusti'g." They heard a muffled, damp sniffle. "And so compledely nod fair."

John peeked around the corner; the passageway was clear. He and Teyla slipped through the shadows cast by the torches high on the walls, past a few cells with their doors hanging open. Kolya never bothered cleaning out the cells after each use, and the air hanging around them was thick with varying combinations of odors -- bile, urine, death, decay.

The first closed door they came to was the one they were looking for, as evidenced by the yelling coming through it. John got into position beneath the lock and knelt. Teyla hesitated.

"Are you sure?" she whispered. "You were very pale after the last time. I don't want to injure you further."

He gave her a look. "What, do you want me to stand on your shoulders and try to pick the lock? We'd be here for days. I'm fine; hop up."

She climbed up without hesitating again, like John knew she would. It wasn't likely that Kolya would wait too much longer before sending for one of them again. They both knew they didn't have a lot of time, or any other options.

She got her feet settled on his shoulders, squatting a little and leaning against the door to steady herself. He grasped her ankles, took a deep breath, and heaved up.

And nearly toppled them both over. They wobbled, and his shoulder hit the door; Teyla's weight lightened considerably all of a sudden, and stayed light as he waited out the head rush. He shook it off as quickly as he could, braced himself against the door and looked up. Teyla had caught the mouth of the lock and she was holding herself up by it.

"I'm okay," he said.

She nodded and eased her weight back onto him. He stifled a groan; he felt like one big bruise, and his shoulder hurt like a son of a bitch. He tried to ignore it as Teyla stuck her hand into the lock and went to work on it.

There had been a bit of a learning curve when she had done that on their door. While her lock picks had worked on their cages, they were much too small for the larger door. Fortunately, it turned out that her newly tiny, slender, long fingers could reach the mechanism.

It could have been worse. Kolya could have turned them into frogs, or something else without opposable thumbs. Or he could have turned them into sprites instead of fairies, and instead of being the size of skinny, underdeveloped toddlers -- the right size to do what they were doing right now, at least -- they could be two inches tall with body mass approximating a couple of toothpicks glued together.

John figured he knew why Kolya had chosen this shape. The fact that it was humiliating was probably a big part of it -- people kept fairies as pets, trained them to do tricks, led them around on leashes, dressed them up in ridiculous outfits for the annual fairy show. They looked relatively human, but weren't even half as intelligent as the dragons John bred; and they were annoying as hell. Yappy, drooling, spastic little bastards that thought it was the most fun thing ever to steal every shiny thing you owned and throw garbage at you when their owners weren't looking. He wasn't surprised you couldn't find them in the wild anymore. He suspected that the rest of the woodland creatures had exterminated them out of sheer embarrassment. If John and his team made it out of this alive, and anyone back home found out, they'd never live it down.

But even beyond the humiliation factor, in a form so close to their original Kolya could let John and his team retain their human intelligence, their knowledge and personalities. Plus, given their previous encounters with Kolya's people, the fact that it was a lot easier to kick around someone who was too small to effectively fight back was no doubt a bonus to the bad guys.

He heard a rusty _thunk_ and looked up again. Teyla was already going into a crouch, getting ready to jump down, and the long ends of her gossamer wings flapped in his face. He grimaced and let go of her ankles, staggering a bit when her weight vanished. She landed lightly beside him, and they both planted their hands on the edge of the door and shoved.

Rodney's complaining and sneezing had been a constant backdrop to their work, but it stopped as the door creaked open. As soon as he saw them, though, he started up again.

"Thank god!" He clung to the bars of his cage, pressing his face against them. "I'm going into anaphylactic shock here! Look -- " He stuck his arm through the bars at them; as they neared the pair of cages shoved against the back wall of the cell, John could see that the downy covering of fairy feathers on the arm had been roughed up, and the skin underneath was blotchy. Rodney pulled his arm back in and scratched at it vigorously. "A rash! I have a rash! Do you know why?"

Teyla pulled out her lock picks and stretched up to reach the lock on Rodney's cage. "Because you are allergic to yourself?"

"Yes! I mean, what the hell! Did Kolya ever stop to consider there might be a _reason_ I don't keep any fairies?"

"I really don't think Kolya would care, Rodney," John said. He moved to Ronon's cage. "You okay?"

Ronon had his arms crossed and a dark look on his face, and the little feathers around his eyes were bristling. At first John thought he was standing on his tiptoes, but then he realized that the pale blur behind Ronon was his wings, vibrating agitatedly, strongly enough that Ronon was hovering about a half-inch off the ground.

"He's been like that the whole time," Ronon said, shooting a glare at Rodney.

"Well, yeah," John said. "Hey, did you know you're levitating?"

Ronon glanced down. With what appeared to be great effort, he took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and relaxed. Sort of. His feathers smoothed and his wings stopped buzzing, anyway, and he settled down with his feet flat on the floor. In the bright, flickering light of a torch on the wall above them, John could see hints of greens, midnight blues and browns in the silky transparency of his wings. Teyla's contained shades of fiery red and orange; as Rodney lurched out of his cage, the flutter of his wings behind him showed purple and royal blue.

John shifted sideways to allow Teyla access to the lock on Ronon's cage, and tried to twist a little to see what colors were in his wings. He couldn't twist very far without aggravating various aches and pains, though.

"What are you doing?" Rodney asked.

"Trying to see what color my wings are." He flexed his shoulder and back muscles a little, to see if he could get the wings to lift and spread. They were a mess -- they were such delicate things, and Kolya's goons hadn't bothered being careful of them. There weren't a lot of nerves in the wings, so he hadn't felt the damage, which was good; but unfortunately as shredded as they were they just sort of hung there in tatters, not picking up enough torchlight to show their colors.

He realized Rodney was staring at him.

"What?"

"We are trapped," Rodney said pointedly. "We are being held prisoner in a dungeon by an insane sorcerer who plans to torture us all for information. We are approximately one-fourth our normal size and we are _fairies_. And you're fixated on what color your wings are?"

"I'm not fixated, Rodney. But that reminds me." He turned to Ronon. "So you can levitate. Think you could actually fly?"

Ronon shook his head. "Tried, couldn't figure it out."

John looked hopefully at Rodney. Rodney snorted and said, "What do _you_ think," and started scratching his neck.

He sighed. He'd figured that would be the case. Teyla had tried to fly, when they were first working on the problem of reaching the lock on their own cell door. Even as light as she was, and as agile and strong as she was, she still hadn't been able to get the flying thing to work. Maybe they weren't quite fairy enough; maybe it was just the fact that flight depended on wing muscles they'd only had for a few hours and which therefore didn't quite work yet.

He glanced at Teyla as she got the lock to snap open and stepped back to let Ronon push through the door. Her expression as she tucked away her lock picks and returned his look was resigned.

John nudged Rodney as they all headed for the cell door. "About how long will we be like this?"

"Well," Rodney said. He rubbed both arms distractedly as he thought. "The spell Kolya used sounded like a mid-level mage's hex, which obviously isn't going to be as strong or stable as straightforward transfiguration, or even a broad-range curse."

John rolled his eyes. Rodney was one of the best practical and theoretical sorcerers around, but he could not give a simple answer to any question concerning magic. John used to think that was just Rodney, but then he'd met Sam Carter, and now he was pretty sure they must learn that as part of their apprenticeship.

"Which means we'll be like this for...how long?"

"There's no way to be absolutely sure -- Kolya's good at tossing around quick magic, but speed necessarily costs you in accuracy -- "

"Rodney."

Rodney eyed him; John could practically hear him thinking _ignorant cretin_. "Forty-eight hours, give or take."

John grimaced. "Great. So much for plan B."

"Which was?" Rodney asked.

They made it to the door, and Ronon ducked through to make sure the hallway was deserted while John answered,

"Fight our way out of here."

Now it was Rodney's turn to roll his eyes. "Right, because four of us against Kolya's phalanx of knights would have been a great plan. Do I even want to know if we have a plan C?"

John heard Teyla sigh. They had discussed their options on the way here, and she liked plan C even less than plan B. John rubbed uneasily at a patch of dried blood beneath his ear.

"We do. But you're going to hate it."

*

Teyla's people lived in the fortress back on Mount Atlantis, so there were always little kids of various ages running around. The littlest ones were always chugging after the bigger kids on stumpy little legs, and hauling themselves tirelessly up stairways and onto chairs and benches, and generally functioning perfectly well in a world that was built for adults.

As he scrambled up over yet another step that came up to his waist and sprawled onto the landing, John had new respect for the little rugrats.

He crawled out of the way as Teyla sprang up beside him. Ronon shoved Rodney up and clambered up, too.

They were all out of breath, and when Rodney flopped down against the wall and said he was taking a break and if anybody didn't like it they were welcome to carry him the rest of the way, no one argued.

John paced, wandering the perimeter of the landing, while Ronon and Teyla took the opportunity to stretch out and rest. He would have loved to collapse next to them, but he was so universally stiff and achy, and so beyond exhausted that he knew that as soon as he sat or lay down, he wouldn't be getting up for a while.

There was no banister on the spiral staircase, so he stopped just shy of the edge, peering up toward the top of the tower. Somewhere not far above, a door stood open, letting in light and air. Finally. Kolya still had his people looking for them out in the keep and around the outer wall of the castle, probably assuming they'd head out of the castle rather than trap themselves in a dead-end tower. But the place wasn't that big; eventually they'd check the tower just to be thorough.

"We're almost there," he said.

Rodney groaned. "Oh, what's the point? Even if we don't die of exhaustion before we get there, we'll be eaten alive as soon as you open one of those kennels."

"We're not going to be eaten," John said -- again; nobody liked the plan, but Rodney was the only one who was bothering to complain about it. "Besides, we can't hole up in this place for two days without getting caught, and until then we'll be too small to take out all of the guards at the gate and work the drawbridge. This is our best shot at getting out of here."

"No, what this is, is our best shot at dying here in a way that deprives Kolya of the pleasure of killing us himself." He sniffled unhappily. John grimaced a little in sympathy; Rodney's fairy allergy wasn't actually life-threatening, but he still looked miserable. His eyes were puffy and red, and judging by the indiscriminate scratching the rash appeared to have spread everywhere. "Couldn't we just find someplace to hide and wait for Elizabeth to send someone to rescue us?"

"You know she cannot do that, Rodney," Teyla said patiently. "Kolya's wards are too strong, even for the Avatar. That was the entire purpose of our mission -- to find the artifact that may allow her to strengthen both her defensive and offensive powers."

Hopefully, she didn't say. The four of them had been running all over the country, looking for various artifacts based on a vision Elizabeth had gotten from the Goddess. So far they'd found a crystal that was supposed to amplify power and an amulet that was supposed to contain spells used for widespread protection; but despite having all of her best sorcerers working on them, nobody actually knew how to use them yet. The Goddess had told Elizabeth where to look, but neglected to pass along the user manual.

The Staff of Undoing sounded like it might be a bit more straightforward, at least. Rodney seemed to think he'd be able to figure it out as soon as he found it. John hoped he could. He had no doubt that Kolya would find them quickly if they managed to escape; he wouldn't be able to get the drop on them again, but with most of their weapons and all of Rodney's sorcerous paraphernalia confiscated, they'd be sitting ducks. Getting that staff to work would be their only hope.

Of course, they still had to escape first.

*

"This is a problem."

"You think?"

Only two knights guarded the kennels at the top of the tower, but they were both armed and armored, and currently much, much bigger than John and his team.

"I got this," Ronon said. He pulled a knife from his boot, and eased out the door, keeping to the shadows against the low tower wall.

"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Rodney hissed. "That knife is going to be about as effective as a toothpick at that size!"

John was wondering the same thing. As Ronon edged around nearly to the first kennel, so that he was straight across from where the guards slouched on a bench against the opposite wall, John whispered, "Well, even a toothpick can be...er, dangerous."

"Oh really? Such as when it just won't get that last bit of gristle from between your teeth and then you get a cavity?"

With a flick of his wrist Ronon threw the knife. One of the guards dropped his crossbow, clapped his hands over an eye and fell off the bench, screaming.

"Or when it gets buried in your eye," John said.

The second guard dropped to his knees, trying to get the screaming man to calm down long enough to tell him what was wrong. When that didn't work he leaped to his feet and turned toward the door, meaning to go for help. He froze when he saw the three sort-of-fairies standing there; it took him a moment to realize who exactly they were, long enough for Ronon to step out of the shadows and pull another knife, this time from his hair. When the guard opened his mouth to shout the alarm, Ronon threw, and the guard went down clutching his throat and gagging.

John and Teyla ran forward to drag the crossbows well out the injured guards' reach while Ronon gave each man's head a hard thump on the flagstones to knock them out.

Rodney followed them out. "Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that you're on our side?" he said to Ronon.

"No kidding," John said, clapping Ronon on the shoulder as he headed to the kennels.

The dragons hadn't raised the alarm, which John took as a good sign. Dragons weren't telepathic in the traditional sense, but there was a mental component to working with them; presuming the guards were their handlers, their own emotional distress should have been enough to get set the dragons screeching.

But the good thing about being an Agent of the Avatar _and_ the breeder of some of the most sought-after leisure and defense dragons meant that even Kolya probably owned at least a couple that had come from John's stable. If one of those happened to be the alpha dragon, and it recognized him as a friend, that would be enough to shut the rest of the dragons up.

He moved slowly around the half-circle of kennels. They were iron cages, the back ends mortared with rough stone to give the dragons a place to lurk when they slept or when the weather was bad. A couple were empty, which meant Kolya was using them to help in the search.

He felt Teyla at his shoulder.

"Some of Kolya's men out in the keep heard the screaming. We will be found soon."

John nodded, and then stopped in front of a kennel. "Oh yeah," he said softly. "We just got lucky."

He would recognize that crest anywhere. As the dragon eased itself out of its little cave and stepped forward curiously, the sun struck its emerald hide and lit up the bony ridge that edged its brow, swooping down to a point at the end of its nose. On most dragons, the brow crest and flare of longer scales that ridged their necks and backs were colored a shade deeper than their hide. This dragon, though, came from the last clutch John had personally cared for during hatching, before he had partnered with Halling and gave up most of the day to day activities. The mother had been an elegant purebred named Hester, and like their mother all of her off-spring had crests and spine ridges that glowed a beautiful ivory.

John could see that the dragon knew him, too. It should -- he'd been there when it had hatched, helping it and its squawking siblings break out of their shells, feeding them meat mush, helping Hester make sure they didn't accidentally roast each other...

"You have got to be joking."

At Rodney's outburst, the dragon's amber eyes swiveled to look at him, and it snorted, startled. Jets of smoke shot out of its nostrils, which naturally didn't make Rodney feel any better. He jumped back, bumping into Ronon.

"You have _got to be joking_," he squeaked again. "We can't ride that thing! It's -- it's HUGE!"

"That's the point, Rodney." It was big, comparatively, which was a good thing for them. Dragons were typically the size of small horses, too small for regular-sized adults to ride. But John was pretty sure it would be able to carry four child-sized people. Assuming it would allow them to even get on its back. There was a reason that people who kept dragons generally didn't keep fairies, too.

Teyla was already shimmying up the corner of the cage to unhook the latch. He blew out a breath and said,

"Guys, don't let the gate fall on you."

Filling his head with calmness and _you know me_ and _I am not food_ and _damn, I breed nice dragons_, he squeezed through the bars.

The dragon scooted back, snorting again in surprise. John was used to being taller than the creatures, and it was a little freaky to look up into the arrow-head face and see the huge canines overlapping the lower jaw as it towered over him.

This was it. It was entirely possible that puzzling out 'familiar and trusted person' versus 'lunch on the hoof' would be too much, and the dragon actually would just eat him. He murmured softly as he moved forward, keeping his hands out, and palms up. When he got close enough, he reached out slowly and stroked a hand down the dragon's neck, over the wing joint on its shoulder, and down its chest.

He heard the gate come loose; the hinges were along the bottom, so once free it simply fell open. John held his breath, afraid that the enormous _clang_ as it hit the ground would scare the crap out of the dragon and it would trample him and torch them all. The clang never came, though. Instead he heard an _oof_ and glanced back to see Ronon had caught the gate on its way down. The weight of it dropped him to his knees, but he kept hold of it, and with Rodney's help lowered it quietly the rest of the way down.

"Nice," John murmured, just loudly enough for the others to hear. Ronon stood and shook out his hands, looking pleased with himself.

John turned back to the dragon. He kept himself as calm as possible, trying to maintain an emotional sense of _this is totally not something to freak out about_. Slipping beneath a folded wing, he rested his foot as gently as he could on the dragon's bent hind leg, and hauled himself up.

The weight on its back startled the dragon, and it shied sideways, belly to the ground, bumping into the side of the kennel. He flattened himself, holding on tightly, and slid quickly forward to where he could get his arms around its narrow neck.

Then he heard a shout, muffled but close. Kolya's knights were on the stairs, almost to the top of the tower.

"Crap." Raising his voice, but trying to keep his tone calm, he said, "Okay guys, it's now or never. Climb aboard."

Teyla was the first one into the kennel. "It does not look happy about this."

"It's not, entirely, but we don't really have time to get it acclimated."

He reached down and gave her a hand up. Ronon herded Rodney into the kennel. Rodney had a hysterical whispered mantra of _oh god oh god oh god oh god_ going, but he didn't hesitate to climb up behind Teyla, scooting forward to make room for Ronon.

The clatter of boots on the flagstones outside the kennel helped give an extra layer of sincerity to John's attempt to project fear and urgency as he reached forward and slapped the dragon's neck. It recognized the signal to move, but it still wasn't sure what to make of the excess weight on its back and it exited the kennel in a hesitant sort of bunny hop.

John knew that if the animal didn't get moving fast, this escape would be over before it had half begun. Luckily, as soon as the knights saw the dragon and the four of them on it, they surged forward, swords drawn and crossbows waving, yelling angrily.

The dragon did not like that even more than it didn't like having little people on its back. Prodded on by John's alarm, the fight or flight instinct took over. It heaved a deep breath, whipped its head around, and roared at the knights with fire. Then it hoisted itself onto the tower wall, unfolded its wings, and leaped.

*

"This isn't so bad," John yelled as cold wind buffeted him and tore at his face and clothes. Every now and then, as the dragon turned and the wind briefly shifted direction, he could hear Rodney howling in terror behind him.

"What?" Teyla clung to his back with one arm wrapped around his waist, holding onto the dragon's spine ridge with the other. Her face was tight against his shoulder.

"I said, _this isn't_ \-- " A blast of wind as the dragon banked sharply made him choke on the words. "Never mind," he gasped, and shut his mouth.

They were really, really high up. His cheek pressed to the side of the dragon's neck, he could see what was going on below them. Kolya had released the other dragons to go after them, but they appeared confused. They wanted to obey, but they didn't really want to go after their alpha, because it would probably kick all of their asses. So they just circled, far below.

Worse than that, their dragon was circling, too. All of the dragons had been trained to stay close to home unless given certain kinds of commands by their handlers, so while it seemed to understand that John wanted it to take them away, it couldn't bring itself to do more than circle the castle.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do about that. Dragons weren't trained to respond to riders, and none of the physical commands he'd tried had any effect. At this point he was just glad they were all able to stay attached to its back. Maybe it was the wings, or the long, undulating body -- whatever; riding a dragon was nothing even close to riding a horse. It was all he could do to cling to its neck as it lurched and twisted and heaved through the air.

Plus, he was getting colder by the minute. His hands and feet were freezing, and his muscles were getting stiff. The others had to be feeling the cold, too. They couldn't take this too much longer; they had to either get away or land.

They would really have been screwed, in fact, if not for the fact that Kolya was a complete maniac.

The thing was, Kolya had to know that if he was patient the dragon would have eventually gotten tired of flying around and would have headed back to its kennel. But Kolya was not patient. Why wait for something to fall in your lap when you could blast it out of the sky, was his motto.

The bolt of lightning missed them by several feet, but that was close enough to smell ozone and make John's hair stand on end. The dragon swerved, dipping a little sideways, and John clung tightly, praying that the others would hold on too.

_Away, away, away, get the hell away from here_, he thought desperately.

More lightning bolts crackled past, closer this time, causing the dragon to zig and zag and to keen in distress. Then a bolt clipped it somewhere. It contorted in mid-air, and electricity shivered through it and through everybody holding onto it. John felt it in his teeth and in his skull, a jaw-clenching buzz, and his toes and fingertips went numb. He felt as though he was floating off the dragon -- and realized that was because the dragon was dropping like a rock. Its wings floundered and it coiled and spun out of control for a never-ending moment.

Just when John thought they were through, that the dragon was going to splatter on the ground and them with it or it was going to throw them all off, the dragon righted itself and snapped its wings out. The fall broke so fast that Teyla was thrown against him and he was slammed forward, face smacking hard against the dragon's neck ridge. His nose exploded in pain and he tasted blood. He blinked his eyes open and forced them to focus, to see where they were, where Kolya and the castle were.

They were horrifically close to the ground. The dragon's feet nearly skimmed the treetops. But the castle -- he didn't see the castle. They were over the forest, gaining altitude with dizzying speed, flying in a straight line away from the castle.

"Rodney!" Teyla shouted, and then her weight vanished from his back.

"Teyla -- " he twisted to look behind him, saw her stretch out across the dragon's back, reaching down. Ronon had a foot hooked under the dragon's hind leg and was holding on one-handed to its spine ridge; the rest of him hung half off the dragon. Rodney clutched Ronon's wrist, swinging free beneath the dragon's belly.

Teyla had grabbed hold of Ronon's arm; between them they dragged Rodney back onto the dragon. But the movement and the excess weight concentrating in that spot threw the dragon off balance. It started to flounder again. John felt it whine low in its throat, felt the muscles in its shoulders and back bunch up. Then it thrashed, a coiling ripple that ran through its body from head to tail, snapping its back end like a whip.

Ronon had a tight hold on the dragon and Rodney, but Teyla was still in the process of letting go of them to regain her hold on the dragon. She flew off, into the air, and fell.

John knew he screamed, but all he could hear was the wind. The dragon pulled up short, its wings beating hard to stop its forward motion, and it hovered. It bleated in confusion -- John had wanted _away_ and now he wanted _go back_, and he could sense that it didn't know what the hell to do.

He didn't have time for confusion. He reached up and grabbed its neck ridge and tried to force its head down, and let the anguish pour out of him.

Something got through to it. With a sudden heave of its wings, it turned sharply, got Teyla in its sights, tucked and dove.

John could see her still falling. Either the dragon had been a lot further up than he'd thought or it had only felt like forever between her falling off and the dragon obeying his desperate command. She was so far below them, but there was still a chance.

He glanced back to make sure Rodney and Ronon were still safe, and when he turned back and looked down again he saw Teyla twist in the air, onto her back. Her fairy wings flared out beneath her, pressing up against her outstretched arms; and then she flipped again.

And suddenly they were gaining on her.

And then there she was. Not below them, falling inexorably away, but ahead of them.

The dragon angled in, gliding toward her, and John could see that her outstretched hands gripped the edges of her wings. They had caught the wind like a kite, and she was skimming the air.

Then it was just a matter of getting beneath her, and her letting go of her wings and dropping down onto the dragon's back behind John.

She latched onto him immediately, but she wouldn't have fallen even if she hadn't. Rodney and Ronon both surged forward, Ronon using his weight and Rodney his arms to hang onto her.

The new distribution of weight seemed to work pretty well for the dragon. A few beats of its wings got it planed out, and it coasted the air currents. John had no idea where it was going, but at this point, as long as it wasn't back to Kolya's castle he didn't care.

As soon as his heart stopped pounding and he could breathe again, he leaned back.

"You okay?" he said.

"Yes." She sounded breathless, too.

"You were flying."

"I know."

He waited. Finally he said, "And? How was it?"

"It was one of the more frightening things I have experienced in my life." She paused, and he felt her tremble against his back from a laugh. "And it was _magnificent_."

*

John eventually managed to cajole the dragon into taking them where they wanted to go. This was mostly because they wanted to go to the nearby Southern Mountains, and it was heading that direction anyway. But with a combination of pressure against the dragon's neck and a deeply exaggerated desire to land on a certain peak, he got them within easy walking distance of where they thought the Staff of Undoing was hidden.

The dragon landed on a relatively horizontal patch of mountainside where the trees gave way to hardy mountain weeds. They all piled off, staggering as they got their land legs back. Rodney staggered over to a tree stump and clung to it while he sneezed half a dozen times in a row. Even Ronon looked a little shell-shocked, his eyes wide and his wings drooping heavily. Only Teyla had any energy left. She was practically glowing, her wings flaring out and beating lazily against her back as she smiled up at the sky and breathed in the mountain air.

John stifled a grin and shook his head, stretching. He groaned as every single muscle protested. "That was exciting."

Rodney wiped his nose on his sleeve, grimacing. "You know what, just be glad I'm too traumatized to tell you exactly what I think of your horrible, idiotic, bone-headed, kamikaze plans." He sank to the ground beside the tree stump. "God. I'm too exhausted to do anything right now. Even my rash is too tired to itch."

The dragon had apparently had enough, too. It huffed a smoky breath and threw itself to the ground, making irritated clucking noises. Rodney pointed at it.

"What he said."

John eased himself down next to the dragon, leaning against its shoulder and stroking its neck a few times. He projected as much gratitude and praise as he could; that seemed to soothe it and it settled down with its chin on its forefeet, and closed its eyes.

Teyla joined Rodney. "Can you sense the Staff?"

Rodney nodded. "It's close. And I'm going to go get it as soon as my muscles stop being terrified and start to work again."

"Sounds like a plan." John looked around, momentarily amazed at how tall the weeds grew, even at this elevation and in this rocky soil. They he remembered that the weeds weren't tall, he was just short. "Do you think you can make the Staff undo this fairy spell? Or are we really going to be stuck like this for the next two days?"

Shooting him a withering look, Rodney said, "Amazingly enough, that is in fact just the sort of thing the Staff of _Undoing_ is meant to do. And I refuse to spend another hour in this toxic form, so yes, I most definitely will figure out how to make it undo the spell."

John sighed, relieved. If his wings weren't in such bad shape, he'd be tempted to find a short cliff and try that gliding thing Teyla had done, but as it was, he was ready to not be an itty bitty fairy any more.

He tipped his head back, looking up. Ronon still stood, scanning the area, and when John caught his eye he said,

"Kolya won't give up. His other dragons will be able to track this one pretty easily."

"I know." John stretched out his legs and kneaded his aching shoulder. "It'll be a bit before he'll be able to get the others under control, though. We took out their handlers and made off with the alpha dragon. We've got time to rest."

He closed his eyes. He wouldn't sleep, but he was shaky and still running on adrenaline, and he needed to calm down, breathe a bit, and enjoy the fact that at least for a while his people were safe.

He felt Ronon's warmth as he sat down next to him, and then a gentle tug on his back. Or rather, wing. He opened his eyes to see Ronon gently lifting one of John's ragged wings. Ronon cocked his head to the side, and squinted as he held the wing up.

"What are you doing?"

Ronon pointed to a couple of places where the wing wasn't torn. "Silver," he said.

John blinked at him. "Huh?"

"You wanted to know what color your wings are. I see silver." He paused. "Some rainbowy colors too."

"'Rainbowy'?" He arched an eyebrow, but Ronon just nodded -- serious, not teasing. Okay, maybe slightly teasing, but still.

"Huh." He closed his eyes and considered that while soaking in the warmth of the sun. Silver and rainbowy sounded kind of cool, he thought. Possibly.

Probably not.

He thought a little longer, and then peered sideways at Ronon. He was smirking.

"Just so we're clear," John said. "If you tell anyone back at the fortress about my rainbowy wings, I'll tell them about that thing that happened with the court jester last month."

Ronon laughed.

*


End file.
